


An Unconventional Haunting

by INMH



Series: Ancestry [2]
Category: Assassin's Creed - All Media Types
Genre: Bleeding Effect, Blood, Coma, Family, Gen, Humor, Hurt/Comfort, Post-Movie, Strong Language, trapped together
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-06
Updated: 2017-07-06
Packaged: 2018-11-17 23:59:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,809
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11279481
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/INMH/pseuds/INMH
Summary: So… Aguilar’s a thing that Callum is having to deal with now.





	An Unconventional Haunting

**Author's Note:**

> Okay so Certain People who died in the movie (and if you're bothering to read this story I have to assume you've seen the movie, so you know that's Emir and Nathan) are alive now. 
> 
> Because I say so.

“Are you feeling any better, _Nieto?_ ”  
  
So, this is a thing.  
  
Aguilar, that is.  
  
Callum opens a weary eye and looks at the long-dead Assassin (who, for his part, looks quite earnest). It takes every ounce of willpower he has not to get snippy. “Oh, yeah, I feel great. Sometimes I just bleed from the nose recreationally.”  
  
Callum doesn’t have a lot of willpower.  
  
In fairness, Aguilar’s appearance just now seems to have triggered a brand-new headache, and Callum’s not known for being sweet and friendly when he’s in this kind of pain.  
  
Aguilar raises his eyebrows at Callum and moves over to the bed. “Your shirt is _cubierto en sangre_.”  
  
Callum frowns. “What?”  
  
“Your shirt. It is _cubierto en sangre_.”  
  
Blood rushes from Callum’s nose, and pain lances through his head. “Okay, never mind, stop talking please.” He leans over the side of the bed and starts retching, grabbing the small trashcan nearby and dragging it over before he can vomit or spit up all over the floor.  
  
This has been happening for about a week. Ever since they’d found an Assassin cell in Cork; ever since he’d had his first encounter with Aguilar.  
  
Apparently Lin has Assassin ancestry- like, she was raised by Assassins. So she’s very good at tracking them down. She was able to find the Irish Brotherhood in the South, and a handful of the survivors from the Madrid complex were hiding out there now. Others had opted to disappear into the streets of Spain, and others had chosen to find their way home their own way.  
  
And for the last week, Callum had been bed-bound, blood randomly flowing from his nose. The headaches would make his head pound, and then his balance would be so upset that he couldn’t stay upright for very long.  
  
“Please get into bed before I have to scrape you off the floor,” Moussa had pleaded.  
  
“Fuck off,” Callum had responded- or tried to. It came out more as “Fujuh.”  
  
Right now, his deepest wish is to just close his eyes and go back to sleep. But as much as it pains him, Callum knows he needs to talk to someone about this, because he might kind of actually be dying. The facility seems to be big enough and well-staffed enough to have a competent doctor somewhere.  
  
Callum slowly gets out of bed, reaching for the bag he’d brought when they’d cleared out of Madrid for a new shirt.  
  
“I don’t think you should be standing right now, Callum.”  
  
“ _No_ ,” Callum groans, and he doesn’t mean for it to be an agreement; he just desperately wants Aguilar to stop talking, because his brain simply can’t handle anymore stimulation than it already has. It feels like someone’s put a blender-blade in his head and had set it on high.  
  
He stumbles for the door, and Aguilar says nothing more.  
  
[---]  
  
Callum hobbles down the hallway and finds himself in the common area. Really, all that led him there was the fact that he could hear familiar voices.  
  
“-and bring it inside. It’s not my fault he was being an asshole.” That sounds like Nathan, in all of his grumpy glory. Callum steadies himself by keeping a hand on the wall, and it’s painfully inadequate. When he reaches the room properly, he sees Moussa reclining on a couch and Nathan pacing angrily near the window; tracking his movements makes Callum dizzy.  
  
Moussa doesn’t notice him at first, deep in his conversation with Nathan. His eyes roll shut, and he tips his head back. “Nathan, I know it’s like your…” He waves his hand at Nathan vaguely. “… _Aesthetic_ and everything, but could you maybe- I don’t know- dial back the bitchiness for… Like, _five fucking minutes?_ Please?”  
  
Nathan’s response is a surly glare that Callum’s learned to associate with him.  
  
Moussa looks up and sees him at the door. “Pioneer! You’re up! Does that mean your brain’s not bleeding anymore?”  
  
Were Callum’s vision not blurring and sharpening at random intervals, he might have noticed the hint of concern in Moussa’s eyes. “Wouldn’t say that,” Callum rasps, moving over to a chair and shakily lowering himself into it.  
  
His head throbs, and he sees Aguilar standing in the corner, looking at Moussa and Nathan curiously. “Are they Assassins?” He asks.  
  
Without thinking, Callum nods. “Yeah.”  
  
Nathan frowns. “Who are you talking to?”  
  
Moussa shoots him a look. “Who do you think?”  
  
And that makes Nathan’s eyebrows shoot up. “You can see him now, then?”  
  
Callum has to take a moment, has to force his brain to process everything that’s just been said; it feels like they’re speaking too quickly for him to follow, like someone’s fast-forwarding the conversation and Moussa and Nathan’s words are being spoken by a pair of chattering chipmunks on high-quality meth (which Callum has tried only once, because he’s an idiot; though thankfully, not enough of an idiot to do it twice).  
  
“Uh… yeah. Aguilar. Yeah. I, uh… I can see him.”  
  
Moussa whips a handkerchief out of his pocket and holds it out to Callum, who realizes that his nose is bleeding again. He takes it, and Moussa frowns slightly. “Has this been going on all week?”  
  
Callum bobs his head in what he hopes is a nod, clumsily pressing the handkerchief to his face. God, how does he even have any blood _left?_  
  
“I’m gonna go get a doctor,” Moussa says, hopping off the couch. “Nathan, make sure he doesn’t croak before I find someone.”  
  
“Would it be so bad if he did?”  
  
Moussa cuffs him without missing a beat as he leaves the room.  
  
“So you’ve finally got an ancestor following you around,” Nathan says, dropping into Moussa’s vacated seat, “Sucks, don’t it?”  
  
Callum turns to look at Aguilar, who’s squinting at Nathan. “He has an attitude,” Aguilar remarks.  
  
“No shit, Sherlock.”  
  
“I’d say so,” Nathan says, thinking Callum was responding to him. “You’ll get used to it.”  
  
Callum turns towards Nathan, head bobbing slightly as he tries to focus. “Does it ever stop?”  
  
And for once, Nathan looks at him with something like sympathy. “Not as far as I know. They used the Animus on me almost half a year ago and I’ve had Duncan Asshole following me around ever since.”  
  
A pause.  
  
“I’ll stop using it when it gets old, Duncan, and it’s not old yet,” Nathan says flatly to the air beside him. He turns back to Callum. “He comes and goes as he pleases. He’s a real bastard, but at least he had all of his eggs in one basket.” Nathan’s gaze slides to the point in the room where Aguilar is, because Callum has been staring at Aguilar this whole time. “What about your guy? Assassin or Templar?”  
  
“ _Templar?_ ” Aguilar spits, offended. “ _¿Está bromeando?_ ”  
  
“Assassin,” Callum coughs. Some of the blood’s going to the back of his throat. His vision darkens dangerously for a few seconds, and he presses his hands over his eyes. “ _El sangrado es una mierda._ ”  
  
Nathan frowns. “What?”  
  
“ _El sangrado,_ ” Callum tries to say it more clearly. “ _El sangrado. Es una mierda._ ”  
  
“I don’t speak Spanish, Lynch.”  
  
Callum drops his hands and stares at Nathan- or rather, he tries. “ _¿Qué?_ ”  
  
Understanding floods Nathan’s gaze. “Is your ancestor Spanish?”  
  
Callum bobs his head loosely.  
  
“You’re having a Bleed, man. Everything you’re saying is coming out in Spanish.”  
  
“Callum,” A hand is on Callum’s shoulder, and he tips his (now very light) head back at looks up at Aguilar, who is staring down at him with unmasked concern. “You didn’t no _tice_ …”  
  
Aguilar’s words (which might be in English, but may also be in Spanish) dim, like Callum’s just slipped below water and can’t hear him properly, and everything goes dark and quiet.  
  
And then nothing.  
  
[---]  
  
Callum dreams.  
  
[---]  
  
He’s in the bar the night he killed the pimp, the night that started his journey to death row and Abstergo.  
  
He sees the man slam the teenage prostitute’s head on the bar, and Callum feels that _rage_ in him, the rage he can’t ignore because it only comes when someone’s done something _that bad_.  
  
He runs up to the pimp, pushes him away from the girl, pins him to the floor, and stabs him with the blade hidden up his sleeve.  
  
“Wait,” Callum whispers, staring at the blade poking out from under his sleeve. “This isn’t how it happened. I had a pocket-knife.”  
  
“Ohhh boy,” He turns and sees Moussa leaning on the bar. “You are in big trouble, Pioneer.”  
  
“Deep shit indeed.” Nathan’s sitting on a table next to Callum.  
  
“You should probably leave,” Emir suggests from behind the bar, and motions to the door that Lin is now holding open.  
  
But the door leads into the execution chamber.  
  
“Callum.”  
  
Callum turns to his left.  
  
The bar disappears.  
  
He’s in the cafeteria in the Abstergo facility, and Aguilar is sitting beside him.  
  
“Callum,” He whispers, and he flickers like fire.  
  
Smoke starts to rise from the floor.  
  
Callum knows he should move, but he can’t.  
  
“Callum, wake up,” Aguilar whispers again, and suddenly they’re not in the cafeteria anymore, they’re on the platform that Aguilar was nearly executed on; Benedicto’s body is up in flames a few feet away.  
  
Much like he’d been when he’d experienced the memory in the Animus, Callum is overcome by it, by the heat of the day and the fire, the roaring approval of the crowd and Benedicto’s choked howls, the pain of having his arms stretched by the chains, the general tension he (or rather, Aguilar) had felt as he’d watched his mentor die and tried to save himself and Maria-  
  
And the smell.  
  
The smell is horrendous.  
  
At some point he’s not sitting next to Aguilar anymore.  
  
He _is_ Aguilar.  
  
[---]  
  
Callum wakes up.  
  
And for the first hour afterwards, he still has trouble sorting out what thoughts belong to him and what belongs to Aguilar.  
  
[---]  
  
“You’ve been in a coma for a week.”  
  
Callum tries to focus on Emir’s face, but he’s having trouble. He actually feels a lot better than before the coma- not that that was a high bar in the first place- but he’s still a bit out of it. “Am I dying, or something?” He rasps.  
  
Emir shakes his head. “I doubt it. It’s not uncommon for people who have gone into the Animus as many times as you have- and as _badly_ as you have- to have it happen; once, anyway. That you came out of it is a good sign.”  
  
“Hoo-rah,” Callum mutters.  
  
“You can tell he’s just so excited to be alive,” Nathan coos dryly. Callum can't help but notice that the kid's mood get's better the more Callum's health goes to shit. “I mean, we’ve nothing to look forward to but sunshine and rainbows, after all. Life is awesome.”  
  
Moussa, who’s leaning on the metal footboard of the bed, scoffs. “Kid, you are eighteen! What would you know?”  
  
“Dude,” Callum croaks. “You told me you were old enough to drink.”  
  
“I _am_ old enough to drink,” Nathan says smoothly. “Legal age is eighteen in England.”  
  
“He’s a little shit.” Moussa looks at Emir and Callum for support. “We all agree on that, right? He’s a little piece of shit?”  
  
“Fuck off, Duncan,” Nathan growls, and Moussa starts _howling_.  
  
“See! See! Even his ancestor thinks he’s a little shit!”  
  
Callum snorts and chuckles along with Moussa and Emir, but it tapers off when a pain starts behind his eyes. He waits, anticipating that the pain will grow into something as strong and as ugly as what he’s dealt with for the last week. He shuts his eyes, he waits… But it stays just as it is, an annoying but tolerable pain.  
  
When he opens them again, Aguilar is standing in the doorway.  
  
He blinks, and now Aguilar’s in the corner.  
  
Callum gets tense, if only because he’s come to associate Aguilar’s presence with pain and bleeding, physical or otherwise. But it doesn’t come: Aguilar stares at him, but he doesn’t come over because he doesn’t want to distract Callum when he’s interacting with his friends, that would be rude-  
  
…Wait, what?  
  
Had that been a bleed? Because for a second there it felt like Callum had managed to get a look into Aguilar’s head- or maybe Aguilar had gotten into his. Who knows? It had been weird, but his brain isn’t trying to crawl out of his skull because of it, so he’s not going to complain just yet.  
  
“Yoo-hoo, Pioneer!” Moussa’s snapping his fingers in Callum’s face; Callum starts, because for a split second he’d almost forgotten that there are other people in the room besides the specter of his dead ancestor. Emir is ushering Nathan from the room, and Moussa’s standing near Callum’s head now. The other man slides a look to the area Callum’s been staring at. “Your secret buddy here?”  
  
“He’s not really a secret, is he?”  
  
“True.” Moussa’s still staring at the corner, like if he looks long enough Aguilar might appear. “You don’t need to be embarrassed about it, either. Pretty much everyone who went into the Animus in that place came away with an ancestor hovering over their shoulder. I have no idea what it is- I think it may be because they changed the Animus. Before us, they used the kind where you got to lay down and watch a screen while you synched up.”  
  
“Lucky us,” Callum mutters, shutting his eyes again.  
  
“Yeah.” A beat. “He doesn’t give you shit, does he?”  
  
“Who? Aguilar?”  
  
“Is that his name?”  
  
“Yeah.” Callum opens his eyes again. Aguilar has disappeared, and he lifts his head, turning to see if maybe he’s reappeared somewhere else, but he hasn’t. “And if by ‘shit’ you mean ‘trouble’, then no, he doesn’t, like… Harass me, or anything like that. I just get headaches when he’s around.”  
  
“Mm,” Moussa plops down on the bed beside him. “Those’ll stop soon, for the most part. Emir wasn’t kidding when he said that just about everyone who’s been into the Animus has gone into a coma- we all did, but I think you’ve gone the longest in one without dying- and usually the symptoms aren’t so bad afterwards.”  
  
“Good.” Callum hesitates, glancing around again. “So… They stick around, don’t they? Nathan said so.”  
  
“They do,” Moussa agrees, blowing out a long breath. He suddenly looks a little weary. “That they do. I was in Abstergo for about five years. Longest guy there had been there over seven years, and as far as I know, he had his shadow up until the moment they killed him during our little revolution.”  
  
“Damn.”  
  
Moussa gives Callum a hollow smile. “Be grateful, Pioneer,” He says, with none of his usual humor. “Sounds like you got a good one.” The smile fades. “Not all of us were that lucky. Nathan has a Templar, and I’ve got a Templar sympathizer; when you’re an Assassin, that sucks _balls_.”  
  
Abruptly, Moussa’s head jerks up, and he looks out into the hallway. Actually, it’s more like he’s _glaring_ into the hallway. For a moment, Callum thinks he’s going to say something, but after a moment, he clamps his mouth shut and determinedly looks away.  
  
“You alright?” Callum ventures gently.  
  
“Yeah,” Moussa says, a little too loudly at first, and Callum has the sudden sense that… Baptiste? Is that his name? Might be yelling at his “grandson” now. “Yeah, I’m fine,” Moussa says, at room-level now. Then, aside, he mutters, “At least Walpole’s got almost all his marbles in one basket.”  
  
For the rest of the time that he’s there, Moussa repeatedly turns his head to different positions, like he’s trying very hard not to look at something- or some _one_ \- and Callum does not bring up their ‘shadows’ anymore.  
  
But he’s not exactly encouraged.  
  
[---]  
  
“You should be resting.”  
  
Callum is so startled that he jerks and smacks the crown of his head on the bed-frame. “Hoooo-ly God in _fucking_ Heaven-”  
  
“For a man who doesn’t believe in God, you take his name in vain quite often.”  
  
How does he even know that Callum’s an atheist? Probably the same way he knows English, and knows that Callum was drinking a soda yesterday, and how he knew who Callum was without ever asking, and how he only seems _occasionally_ confused by his surroundings instead of constantly perplexed by them, like you would expect a guy from 1492 to be if he suddenly found himself in 2016.  
  
Aguilar knows a lot of things he shouldn’t, and Callum has a sneaking suspicion that, much like that moment after he came out of the coma, that sometimes their minds are more attached than either of them realizes.  
  
“You have to stop doing that. I am going to have an honest-to-God heart-attack if you keep doing this shit.”  
  
Aguilar frowns. “Which ‘shit’ are you referring to? You seem to take many issues with my presence.”  
  
It isn’t so much that Callum takes issue with Aguilar’s presence as much as it is that he’s not _used_ to Aguilar’s presence or anything relating to the guy at all. He wasn’t before the coma, and a few days out from it, he’s still not. He is not accustomed to having someone randomly appear out of thin air, or talking to someone that no one else can see, or knowing someone that’s low-key capable of reading his mind, or- oh, wait, yes, this is kind of a big one too- _talking to his ancestors who have been dead for almost five-hundred years._  
  
Callum takes a deep breath and calmly pulls his shoes out from under the bed. “This Batman-shit. This ‘one-minute-I’m-alone-the-next-you-are-literally-right-behind-me-breathing-down-my-neck’ shit.”  
  
“What’s a Batman?”  
  
“Oh my fuck,” Callum whispers, letting his head fall forward to lean on the mattress. “Never mind. Just stop fucking surprising me.”  
  
“You must be feeling better,” Aguilar quips, “Or you wouldn’t be swearing so much. Still, you should be resting; you were in a coma not too long ago.”  
  
“He knows what a coma is, but not Batman,” Callum grumbles snidely as he hauls himself to his feet. “Jesus fuck.”  
  
“Why do you insist on using that language? It’s unnecessary,” Aguilar clucks.  
  
“First you tell me to get back into bed, now you’re lecturing me on my language,” Callum snaps. “What are you, my mother? And where was all this when you were in the Animus? I was in your _head_ in there, Aguilar, and this?” He waves his hands in Aguilar’s direction. “This is not like what I saw in there. You were ready to kill a bitch at a moment’s notice, and now you’re acting like a disgruntled soccer mom whose kid just used a bad word for the first time. What is your _damage?_ ”  
  
Aguilar looks at him with some disbelief. “Callum,” He says, “You are my direct descendent. Ergo, at some point in my life, I must have had…?” Aguilar gives him a pointed look.  
  
Un-fucking-believable.  
  
Not only was Aguilar mother-henning him, he was sassing him too.  
  
“A severe blow to the head?” Callum ventures flatly.  
  
“Children, _Nieto._ I had _children_ ,” Aguilar says. “I have been a father. Had the cancer not taken me, I might have lived just long enough to be a grandfather. I am accustomed to dealing with children.” He lowers his voice, speaks aside to himself, “And you’ve inherited their stubbornness.”  
  
Callum, having been momentarily surprised at learning that Aguilar had died of cancer, lets his mouth fall open in offense. “ _I’m thirty-seven!_ ” He squawks. “I’m an adult! I’m not a child! And even if I was, I’m not _your_ child! I have, had, _had_ parents, and I don’t, don’t, don…”  
  
Maybe it’s the ferocity of his response, or maybe his brain has just decided it’s done being patient with this exchange, because Callum starts to get a little unsteady. He’s been okay for the last day or two- better than he’s been in a week, really- but the odd dizziness or mild bleeding still pops up here and there.  
  
Aguilar is at his side for a moment, catching him by the elbow and helping him down onto the bed. “Easy,” he says.  
  
Callum _is_ , generally speaking, feeling better, and that means he’s gotten some of _his_ sass back too, and for a moment he nearly blurts out that the entire reason he’s even having these symptoms is because Aguilar keeps coming back to haunt him like some kind of ghost. The words are on the tip of his tongue, ready to bite because that’s how Callum _is_ when people push him too much; he can be just as violent with his words as he can be with his fists.  
  
But he doesn’t. Partly because it’s not actually Aguilar’s fault- it’s Abstergo and Sophia Rikkin’s fault (wow, thinking of her hurts worse than it’s supposed to)- and partly because Callum has become grimly aware of the reality that he and Aguilar are probably in this together for the long-haul, and that means keeping the peace between them would be the wisest course of action.  
  
“I remember everything until my death, _Nieto_ ,” Aguilar assures him quietly, as Callum carefully eases himself down to lie on his side. “Or about that. I am not the man that you saw in the-” A beat. “- _Animus_. I was older when I died. Wiser.”  
  
“You remember how you died?” Callum asks, because the morbid curiosity is too much.  
  
Aguilar shrugs, sitting down beside him as Moussa had done before. “I believe so,” He says, but there’s uncertainty in his voice. “I had been feeling unwell for a time. I went to bed many nights with the belief that I may not wake up. The last I recall is going to bed with my wife, and then… Nothing.”  
  
“You said you had cancer.”  
  
“I did,” Aguilar nods. “In my chest. They thought it was consumption at first- either would have been fatal at my age.”  
  
“Which was…?”  
  
“Seventy-one.”  
  
“Jesus. Wasn’t that, like… Freakishly old, back then?”  
  
Aguilar snorts. “Old, yes. ‘ _Freakish_ ’, no.”  
  
“You’d better hope I don’t live that long, or we’ll be stuck together for at least thirty years.” The words sound harsher than Callum thought they would. _Stuck together._ There are worse scenarios, and worse people to be stuck with.  
  
“I lived seventy years,” Aguilar says, unfazed, “Another thirty won’t make a difference.” A pause. “But I will endeavor not to harass you.” He smiles, and it’s a knowing smile that makes a small stab of guilt run through Callum. Apparently Aguilar _was_ around for that conversation; in fairness, Callum hadn’t said anything bad about him.  
  
Still, if they’re going to be at this until Callum’s demise, untimely or otherwise, they should probably start drawing lines. “Well, you can start by not bitching about my language.”  
  
“Or, you could just stop swearing.”  
  
“Not gonna fucking happen.”  
  
-End

**Author's Note:**

> If anyone’s looking at this and going, “Wait a minute, Aguilar shouldn’t have memories up until his death, he should only have them until he passed on his genetic material”… I have an explanation. We’ll get there.
> 
> TRANSLATIONS:
> 
> Nieto: “Grandson”  
> Cubierto en sangre: “Covered in blood.”  
> ¿Está bromeando?: “Are you joking?”  
> El sangrado es una mierda: "The Bleeding sucks."
> 
> As usual, I don't speak Spanish, so if my translations are fucked please let me know.


End file.
